Apple Device Management for Beginners

If you're diving into Apple device management for the first time, let this comprehensive guide explain the basics so you can help your organization or school get the most out of its technology initiative.

How Apple and Jamf are changing retail

Sneaker culture is alive and well. And no one knows that better than GOAT, the world’s largest digital platform for buying and selling classic and rare sneakers.

From the boardroom to the warehouse, GOAT has always been an Apple device shop. The founders saw the power and flexibility of the Apple ecosystem early on, and that mentality has continued with every new hire along the way.

In 2017, as GOAT exceeded the 50 Apple device mark, Ryan Colley was brought on to serve as IT Director. At the time, GOAT did not have a dedicated Apple device management solution, so finding the right one was Colley’s first order of business.

Choosing the gold standard in Apple device management

Jamf Pro has a proven track record of integrating with Apple services and helping businesses maximize their technology initiatives — and was the logical choice for Colley and GOAT.

“Being able to use Apple’s business tools in conjunction with a tool like Jamf lets us be really fast, really flexible, and use a small team to manage all devices across our 12 locations,” says Colley.

And when Colley says small team, he means small team. A team of two uses Jamf Pro to manage more than 1,000 macOS and iOS devices and rapidly onboard every new employee with an Apple device.

Zero-touch Apple device deployments

In Q4 2018 alone, GOAT added 80 new workstations and was onboarding five new employees a week. To accomplish this workload with such a small staff, GOAT leverages Jamf and Apple Business Manager to deliver a zero-touch device deployment experience to each employee.

On an employee’s first day, they simply unbox the device, power on and walk through the standard Apple Setup Assistant steps. Once done, their device is fully configured and ready for use. This experience is the same if the employee is at the corporate office or on their couch at home, and even empowers GOAT to drop-ship devices directly to retail stores. Once opened in the store, the device is ready to be a modern point-of-sale cash register.

Saving time and money with every sale

All successful retail organizations know that the sale doesn’t end as soon as the money is transacted. Customers must receive their packages in a timely manner or else they won’t return.

The way GOAT prints shipping labels in their warehouses is very customer. They don’t use a standard printer server and have users simply hit Command-P. Instead, GOAT has a series of servers and stations that listen for printer requests through a Ruby web app.

As a result, GOAT has to conduct large scale updates to their printer services. According to Colley, if these updates had to be done manually, they would require at least three or four additional staff members. Luckily for them, they don’t.

“We utilize Jamf to mass update our entire fleet of kiosks in about five minutes any time we have to make some sort of software or configuration change,” Colley said.

Saying goodbye to duplicate IT help tickets

To streamline shipping efficiencies even further, GOAT added its own Printer Reset application into Jamf Self Service on all Mac kiosks in its warehouses.

Colley says IT would take 10-15 tickets per day on printing issues before the Printer Reset application was put in Self Service. Since then, they have yet to receive another help ticket on the matter.

Considering that each one of the printer tickets took anywhere from 15-60 minutes to address, GOAT is saving hours every week simply by allowing employees to help themselves when issues arise.

IT heroes to the rescue

This blog only scratches the surface on the benefits of Apple and Jamf at GOAT. If you’re interested in reading more, including an incredible story of IT heroics on the mother of all shopping days, Black Friday, be sure to download the full case study.